Abstract
The postulated availability of the information contained in the innovation ignores the very nature of technological progress. Innovation is basically a learning process. It is neither an exogenous promethean gift nor a multipurpose knowledge base that can be oriented according to relative price changes. This neo-classical view of the sixties accommodated well the models of homothetic growth. With the crisis of industrial restructuring and the emergence of new technologies that came later we were incited, if not obliged, to look closer at the inner characteristics of technology and they by no means matched such a view. Technological innovation is a process which occurs differently across industries and over time (Pavitt, 1984); it is at the same time localized, partly tacit and to a large extent history-rooted and with strong irreversibility character that makes it strongly path-dependent and of very limited transmissibility. Let’s say a few words about each of these characteristics.
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Cohendet, P., Héraud, J., Zuscovitch, E. (1997). Economics of Innovation and Learning. In: Soares, O.D.D., da Cruz, A.M., Pereira, G.C., Soares, I.M., Reis, A.J. (eds) Innovation and Technology — Strategies and Policies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29606-7_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29606-7_17
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